Golden Radio Days

by

Lauren Roberts

    

 
Mr. White was right then, and even today his observation is true. Radio, the first oral mass communication device, is still a popular medium. I think it has to do with its partnership with imagination. Voices are supplied, but the rest must come from us. It is a strong medium, but think then how much more powerful it was when it was new and as addicting as it was startling. Radio moved individual parts of the world into a singular unit of mass entertainment and large-scale experiences.

Heading that movement was the National Broadcasting Corporation. NBC was a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), an electronics manufacturer who in the early years of the 20th century saw radio as a new form of marketing. According to the Museum of Broadcasting Communication, “RCA was formed after World War I when General Electric signed an extensive patents cross-licensing agreement with Westinghouse, AT&T, and United Fruit. The product of this alliance, RCA, was owned jointly by the four companies and was created for the purpose of marketing radio receivers produced by G. E. and Westinghouse. As the alliance unraveled during the late 1920s and early 1930s, due to internal competition and government antitrust efforts, RCA emerged as an independent company. In November 1926, RCA formed NBC as a wholly-owned subsidiary.”

Not everyone thought that radio would last. When Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, a forerunner of the vacuum triode, the device that makes radio  broadcasting possible, was brought to trial in 1913  on charges  of fraudulently using the U.S. mails to sell stock in the Radio Telephone Company, the district attorney noted, “De Forest has said in  many newspapers and over his signature that it would be  possible to transmit human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided  public . . . has been persuaded to purchase stock in his  company , , ,” De Forest was eventually acquitted, but the  judge advised him “to get a common garden-variety kind of job and stick to it.” Even H.G. Wells, author of War of the Worlds, wrote in 1925, “I have anticipated radio’s complete disappearance . . . confident that the unfortunate people who must now subdue themselves to listening in, will soon find a better pastime for their leisure.”

The naysayers were wrong.

NBC began broadcasting with 19 stations on November 15, 1926, and on December 23, 1928, it established the first permanent coast-to-coast network in the United States. For many years, NBC was the pinnacle of the medium, and particularly as it entered the so-called Golden Days of Radio (1930-1950). It had the most stations, the most clear channels and the most stars. It was RADIO.

To understand the importance of radio and the power that NBC wielded, one must look at America’s social history of the 1930s. The Great Depression gripped the country. Millions were out of work. Bread lines were common. Communities and families were falling apart. To help cope with the national terror, people turned to cheap entertainment. In 1930, about 12 million U.S. households owned a radio. Nine years later, there were 28 million. Social workers in the 1930s reported that families would sell their furniture, bedding or other household items if needed to make rent payments before giving up their radio.

Radio provided entertainment, but it also filled empty time and offered a sustaining emotional link with a larger community. It linked people in a way that hadn’t been possible before because it did so instantly. Newspapers and magazines existed on a national basis, but the key to radio’s popularity was it immediacy. As Tom Lewis wrote in “A Godlike Presence,” it “enabled listeners to experience an event as it happened . . . knew no geographic boundaries,  drew  people  together  as never before . . . when America’s newest hero, Charles A. Lindbergh returned to America after his flight to Paris, it [NBC] linked fifty stations in twenty-four states” to cover the celebration. The audience for that broadcast was estimated at 30 million people.

Radio also changed politics. Franklin Roosevelt is credited with recognizing and using its power, but when in May of 1928, Herbert Hoover’s managers announce his campaign would take place “mostly on radio and through motion pictures,” they helped dramatically change a process that had been in place for more than 200 years.

But it is Roosevelt who made radio, and radio that made Roosevelt. When most newspapers opposed his policies, he took his persuasive talents to the airwaves with his “Fireside Chats.” The first one took place at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 12. 1933, to talk about the banking crisis. Lewis writes, “To prepare for it Roosevelt lay on a couch and visualized those whom he was trying to reach, ordinary people trying to get on with their affairs, who had little understanding of the reasons why they couldn’t cash a check or withdraw their money. ‘My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking,’ Roosevelt began. ‘First of all let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank, the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit . . . In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around.’
 
“After explaining how ‘undermined confidence’ caused a run on the banks’ deposits, the consequent need for a ‘bank holiday,’ and the plans for their reopening, he reassured his listeners, ‘I hope you can see, my friends, from this elemental recital of what your government is doing that there is nothing complex, nothing radical in the process.’ And he concluded: ‘Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors and guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear.  We have provided this machinery to restore our financial system, and it is up to you to make it work. It is your problem, my friends, your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.” It was a unqualified success, and Roosevelt used it repeatedly, but carefully.

Interestingly, early radio provided career opportunities for women even if the pay and their titles didn’t necessarily reflect that. According to Donna L. Halper  in “Remembering the Ladies—A Salute to the Women of Early Radio” (Popular Communications, January, 1999), women were involved in broadcasting from the beginning—and not just as performers. Many women did work as performers. It was a natural given that in the early part of the twentieth century women were still expected to be proficient in the “womanly arts,” among them music and domestic arts that lent themselves well to the demands of early radio for live performers.

These were the days when women had just won the right to vote, and were moving into the workforce in large numbers. Rarely were the positions anything but factory or office support, but in every field there were women battling for their right to be there. Bertha Brainard was one. As a child, she dreamed of being a movie star or performing in the theatre which, after returning from a nursing career during World War I, she did. In 1921 professional radio came to Newark, New Jersey, and she volunteered to do a program of theatre reviews and news of upcoming shows. Her show was called “Broadcasting Broadway,” and it was the first time any woman was on the air at WJZ. When the station moved to New York, she went with it and was soon earning a salary to find and book on-air talent for the station’s shows. By 1925, she was working in management, developing new programs and hiring announcers.

When NBC purchased WJZ in 1926, Bertha was promoted to Program Manager for their Radio Network, eventually rising to become National Commercial Manager. She ended up staying at NBC for the next 20 years, until her retirement.

She wasn’t the only one. Judith Waller, who had begun at a small station in Chicago that broadcast several times a week from a department store. That station didn’t last long, but Waller who then tried to get a job at the Chicago Daily News received a call from the man who interviewed her, asking her to help him run a radio station he had just bought—WGU. She was named station manager, but it too went under. Its next incarnation, WMAQ, was more successful and she continued to run it persuasively (talking classical musicians and opera stars to perform voluntarily). She also added educational programming—debates, panel discussions and courses from the University of Chicago—believing that the station should both entertain and inform.

NBC bought WMAQ in 1931, and promptly named Waller the head of NBC’s new Educational Division with responsibility for all educational programming on NBC stations throughout the Midwest. Her career was long, more than 25 years, and she used her position to promote programming that would educate the audience.

Money was not ignored, however, NBC and other corporate owners were looking for financial success, and that meant entertainment. Comedy, variety, trendy music and dramatic serials dominated the airwaves, making stars of former vaudeville performers: Eddie Cantor, the Marx Brothers, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Fred Allen. By 1935—the date of this bookmark that was a complimentary memento of a studio tour—there was Bing Crosby’s variety show, “Fibber McGee & Molly,” “Lights Out,” “Tarzan,” “The Lone Ranger”, “The Shadow,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “True Detective Mysteries,” “The Rudy Vallee Show,” “Death Valley Days,” “Rin Tin Tin,” “Buck Rogers in the Year 2430.” “Lux Radio Theater” and more.

But the most popular program for more than 30 years (1928-1960) was  “Amos ‘n Andy,” which NBC broadcast from 7:00-7:15 each weekday evening. It was the first original serial specifically devised for the broadcast medium, and the first to be distributed by syndication. At the height of its popularity, its listenership was almost one-third of the nation's total population. And the two actors were making nearly $100,000, more than Babe Ruth, more than the president of NBC, more than the president of the United States. They were able to earn this because by the thirties, commercial sponsors had come aboard. Entertainment was key, and entertainment was what radio offered.   

Government regulation came into play during this decade. In 1930, chaos dominated the airwaves. Interference by different stations on the same bandwidth occasionally made things unpleasant. So in 1934, as part of its economic recovery plan, the government created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC not only organized stations so they could be heard across the country without overlapping one another, but sought to restrict the number of media outlets one individual could own to prevent any one person from dominating access to information.

But most people didn’t see that. What they heard was the public persona of radio—the stars, the stories, the advertisers. What they saw, if they were lucky enough to visit and take the NBC tour, were the studios and the behind-the-microphone glamour of their favorite shows. What they got was a souvenir bookmark, a memento of their time spent with “their” stars. It was a sweet keepsake, this die-cut microphone bookmark that is one of my personal favorites.

The history of the tiny metal one is obscure; it wasn’t meant for the tour groups, and I wonder if it was an internal gift, a holiday gift to employees or perhaps even a special commissioned one intended as a memento for NBC’s advertisers. I’ll likely never know, but it is a perfect representation of the gathering of the country’s cultural, historical and individual experiences into one familiar microphone.  

Links to old-time radio websites:
United States Early Radio History
Old-Time Radio
University of Virginia Program Guide
University of Virginia Shows
The Vintage Library
RUSC (R U Sitting Comfortably)
Old Time Radio Link Society


Bookmark specifications: NBC Studio Tour (front and back)
Dimensions: 3 1/2” x 1 1/2”
Material: Paper
Manufacturer: NBC
Date: 1935
Acquired: eBay

Bookmark specifications: NBC
Dimensions: 1 1/2” x 1/2”
Material: Stainless steel
Manufacturer: NBC
Date: circa 1930s
Acquired: eBay


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 800 bookmarks and approximately 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) and Book Publicists of Southern California as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. You can reach her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it